Session 0
I plan on posting our adventures here.
Character creation: My four players created the fallowing characters.
player 1 a Goblin Ranger.
player 2 a Human Rouge.
player 3 a Elven Sorcerer (Draconic Bloodline).
player 4 a Dwarven Barbarian (Fury Totem).
So we'll see how this plays out. I gave the players the list of campaign specific backgrounds, but told them they could choose the backgrounds from the playtest document if the wanted.
Player 1 chose Hunter.
Player 2 decided on criminal
Player 3 choose Acolyte, apparently deciding that his character studied the teachings of Calistia for a time.
Player 4 choose to be a Pathfinder Hopeful.
Common complaint was with the character sheet. All of us are over forty, and the font on the second page is way too light, and small, making it hard to read. I know I have a hard time reading it, and I'm the only one at the table that doesn't need glasses (yet).
The ability scores are weirdly arranged, with one player commenting that all of the physical stats should all be on the same side. Another comment was that it was strange that the stat box was small, with the recommendation of just extending the line, and putting in a slash mark to separate the score from the modifier.
I was going to do a campaign journal, but instead I'll write up what happened.
A1 - Sewer Oozs popped up, and everyone made their save. It did maul Player 4, and 2.
A2 - Player 1 tried to sneak in, and the gobs were not surprised. Instead I decided that they'd hide them selves, and then wait and see. When the party emerged into the room, and they started to make their way deeper that's when the Gobs sprang their ambush. Gobs went down when ever hit, The party took a few hits in return. They decided to push on.
A3 - Player 3, and four went into this room, and were taken out in one round of Centipede assault. Player 1, covered player 2 as they extracted their fallen comrades.
A5 - Players saw, and identified the fungus, they decided to avoid.
A6 - Players didn't touch anything in this chamber until after they acquired their mission objective. Player 2 started to get interested in the statuary, but everyone flubbed their religion checks. He used detect magic, and zeroed in on the idol, but made a natural 20 to avoid touching it.
They smashed down the south door, and avoided the trap in the East door.
A9 - Discovered, and disarmed the trap, with no issues.
A8 - Having learned their lesson, they were quite ready for the skeleton ambush. They took a few hits, and a crit fail took Player 4 out for a round. Honestly fumbles were going around quite frequently though out the modual.
At this point they headed back for healing.
A10 - They snuck up on the big bad, and took him out in two rounds. The rouge took full advantage of him, being surprised, and further advantage of flanking it. Still Player 2 got severely mauled, by an easy crit.
Latter they did clean the shrine up, but none of them even though of offering a prayer.
A11 and A 12 - Not much to say they used the key to avoid the trapped lock, and to open the door.
Afterwards we talked about our experience.
It seems that whoever wins initiative gets the upper hand. Also the three action economy, was very brutal on the party. Especially during a surprise round. The CR0 creatures, should have been cut down to only a few, not six Per encounter. Lastly, the system punishes players, and groups, that do not optimize them selves.
The inability to use potions gave the party a rough time. I'd given them some potions (4 minor, and a lesser) at the start, and that's all that allowed them to finish. Suffice to say, Resonance was not well received at all.
The play test was scrapped here on out, since no one wanted to continue.
Regarding the description of A8: what are the critical fails/fumbles you’re referring to here? (I don’t recall seeing any consequences for critically failing an attack in the rule book, but maybe I missed it?)